theoldjamestownchurch

I won't be earning any points with many Anglican leaders with this post, but here goes anyway. To be read in conjunction with the post below:

At some point, the Church - Roman, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant - will be forced to find her tongue on this issue. I think I can accurately predict that she will have to do much better than spouting the kind of platitudes we've heard thus far from Rome, liberal Protestants and many Evangelicals about dealing justly with the "stranger", because what we're talking about here is not the odd "stranger" or bona fide refugees who represent no existential threat to a nation and who will be repatriated at the proper time. Rather, we're talking about a tsunami of nomadic illegal aliens who intend to stay, and among whom are "sleepers" and criminals who intend to subvert, injure, kill and destroy. Not to mention the millions who will overtake the West simply by the act of reproduction. No nation or group of nations is capable of absorbing such a horde without comitting cultural and demographic suicide.

A nation without enforceable borders is not a viable nation.

All that seems to be lost on the folks dedicated to "welcoming the stranger". They are instead motivated - ostensibly anyway - by the desire to do justice and by the potential for evangelization they believe exists with respect to the influx of immigrants. I think there's another motivation, however, and that is the desire not to be associated with the perceived harshness of a position that thinks coolly and clearly about the implications of illegal immigration for demographics and culture. In other words, the position I am taking here, and one that is shared by multitudes of Christians. The other view, however, is that Christians must be "nice", doncha know, and therefore cannot espouse any position that appears not "nice" to the "strangers" in our midst. (I believe it is George Will who once wrote something to the effect that conservatives are supposed to have cool heads to compensate for not having warm hearts.)

Regrettably, ACNA is on apparently on board with the Evangelical immigrant assistance organization Immigration Alliance, in something called the Anglican Immigration Inititiative. See this report of its task force and the emphasis therein on "welcoming the stranger."

Well, orthodox Anglican bishops and other leaders need to "get real" on this thing. First of all, they need to start seriously reading the work of the prognosticators, asking themselves the question of whether or not their support of such initiatives might just be a derelict position to take if the prognosticators are right, and there is every reason to think that they are. Secondly, they need to "get real" about Holy Scripture. Nowhere does Holy Writ say or even imply that a nation must commit suicide in the interest of accommodating the "stranger". In fact, the Bible indicates the exact opposite of what the ACNA initiative and other Christian pro-immigrant organizations argue: God expects people to obey the law -- which includes laws regarding the existence of borders -- and the "stranger" mentioned in the pertinent texts is NOT the same thing as an illegal immigrant.

My suggestion to our bishops, for what it's worth - sigh!, is that you need to stop aping Rome, the liberals and the Evangelicals in this matter, because if you don't, you're going to find yourself on the receiving end of the growing populist ire written about in the articles linked above, and what's more, you will have done so without the Bible on your side. You will have also arguably given aid and assistence to the Enlightenment and its modern-day anti-Christian progeny, even though that wasn't your intent.

For further reading on the exegetical issue regarding the "stranger", see The Use and Abuse of the Bible in the Immigration Debate, by James K. Hoffmeier. Also, A Biblical Perspective on Immigration Policy, by James R. Edwards, Jr. Last but not least, We won't save refugees by destroying our own country, by Peter Hitchens